Most of the scholarly work conducted on female domestic workers is qualitative, on the everyday stories of women whose lives revolve around unjust laws from political systems that never work in their favor. This means that while it has been helpful for me to read academic papers on this topic and to look at different legal documents on labor rights in Spain, I have found that the best way to do research on this is to listen to the women who do domestic work. Academic papers, by definition, cannot possibly capture the reality of people’s lives in their entirety so I feel fortunate to be able to be in constant communication with people whose lives I have read about. In other words, it is different to read about el Convenio 189 and the People’s Party while studying in New York than to meet the people who are fighting for el Convenio to be ratified. This, I think, is the most challenging part about being a qualitative researcher: to convey interview answers and ethnographic data in a way that both thoroughly analyzes the topic being studied but that also stays true to people’s realities.
Many academic papers I have read have been embellished with academic jargon in a way that almost reduces or standardizes people’s lives to a few social terms. This way of presenting research analysis or results can be efficient but it often seeks to arrive to a conclusion that has already been justified by other researchers. However, the most valuable thing I have learned in Madrid by simply listening to people’s conversations and opinions is that my Americanized way of viewing the world is not always necessarily the right, or common, way to view things. For instance, after attending a political forum organized by Servicio Activo Domestico, I mentioned to one of the members that the male political leaders invited to the event were extremely disruptive during the event. Some were mansplaining, interrupting women who were presenting their doctoral dissertations and going over their allotted speaking time even after the female moderator had told them, repeatedly, that they needed to end their statements. However, one of Sedoac’s members told me that these did not seem like negative actions to her and that, if anything, they made her feel challenged to argue for her own perspectives. Experiences such as this one have informed my research in that I now know that my interview questions should engage the participants in a way that will allow them to express their own views. In other words, I’m now conscious of my biases when it comes to identifying or discussing patriarchal behaviors that other people may not view as such.
Aside from the conversations I have had with the women from Sedoac and the events on domestic work I have attended, I have also found looking at legal documents to be helpful in understanding what Sedoac is fundamentally fighting for. Since 2011, there have been a series of laws and reforms that have both promoted and been detrimental to the social security benefits of domestic workers in Spain. Since these documents are extensive and use legal jargon in Spanish, it has been useful for me to study comparative papers or summaries of these laws that are meant for domestic workers to have a better understanding of them. For instance, the “Ley 27/2011” and “Real Decreto 1620/2011” called for an update of social security benefits for domestic workers. Most importantly, the latter law established the regulation of work contracts of domestic workers. However, el Real Decreto 29/2012 basically requires domestic workers who work for less than 60 hors monthly to get contracts independently from their employers. The ratification of Convenio 189 would ensure that domestic workers have the same rights as any worker and that laws such as RD 29/2012 can be reversed.
(I think there are a few typos in the last paragraph that left me confused, so apologies if my response reflects that.) As an ethnographer — i.e. a qualitative sociologist — you have uncovered one of the toughest quandaries a sociologist encounters. That is, how do you document that fulsome experience of an individual while also extrapolating larger points related to the research question you are after? Each of the women with whom you are working has an individual history, politics, belief system, and labor experience. Emphasizing one of these dimensions necessarily turns down the volume on the others. I suppose the answer is to honor your primary sources — the ladies who are sharing their lives with you — and to refine your research question while acknowledging its limitations. So what do you want to know, ultimately? Are you interested in the legal status of domestic workers, as it seems? Are you interested in the immigrant experience of women? Both or more?